Cicely (changed to Cicily) Isabel Fairfield (1892- 1983), known by her pen name Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British-born writer of Scottish-Irish ancestry famous for her novels, journalism, literary criticism, and travel literature. A prolific, protean author who wrote in many genres, she was committed to feminist and liberal principles and was one of the foremost public intellectuals of the twentieth century as well as one of its greatest prose stylists. She reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, the Sunday Telegraph, and the New Republic, and she was a correspondent for The Bookman. Her works include: Henry James (1916), The Return of the Soldier (1918), Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy (1929), The Harsh Voice: Four Short Novels (1935), Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) and The New Meaning of Treason (1969).

About the Author&colon;

Rebecca West (1892-1983) was born Cicily Isabel Fairfield, taking her pen name from an Ibsen play. A feminist and social reformer, she was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1959. Her only son, Anthony West, is the son of author H G Wells.